2 March 1995 - Yahoo! official launch

Founded by David Filo and Jerry Yang, graduate students at Stanford University, Yahoo! was incorporated on the 2nd of March, 1995. Initially, the site was called “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web” but as it grew in popularity, it was renamed Yahoo!, an acronym for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle”. Back then, it was only meant to be a useful guide to navigate the world wide web, and not a business. Today, Yahoo! provides users with information, online utilities, and access to other websites. Its features include a search engine, an email service, a news branch, and a directory.

In the late 1990s, Yahoo! was among the major players in the internet frenzy. Although some losses were sustained, it even survived the collapse of numerous internet-based companies in 2001-2002. With multiple major moves, the company remained a notable name in the industry. It battled Google for many years to retain a higher share of the search engine market. It released its Yahoo! Instant Messenger and bought out Flickr, the internet photo network. Another astonishing step was its acquisition of a 40% share of Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant. Throughout the years, Yahoo has made multiple attempts at reorganisation and reconstruction, with David Filo believing that “technology is about constant reinvention”.

Although Yahoo! has lost its footing now, for some time in recent history, it was the biggest internet phenomenon. In fact, when the company was only 5 years old, it was worth more than Ford, Chrysler, and GM combined. Many of the apps and services that the internet is filled with today were either invented by Yahoo! or soon found a home there (Broadcast.com, Flickr, Yahoo Notebook, Yahoo Music, etc.). It was, additionally, the pioneer of the pay-per-click advertising model. In 2017, Verizon acquired Yahoo! for $4.8 billion, ending the run of what was once deemed the king of the internet.

On the 22nd of February, 1999, the First Internet Bank of Indiana (First IB) opened its virtual doors to the public. This was the first state-chartered FDIC-insured institution to operate only through the internet. Marketed as the first “extended value online bank”, it provided a full range of real-time internet banking products as well as personalised interactive services. Today, it offers services in all 50 states where customers can have checking and savings (both regular and money market) accounts with competitive interest rates. Besides this, First IB offers credit cards, instalment loans, mortgages, and personal lines of credit.

Sitting at the intersection of finance and technology, First IB introduced a branchless financial institution that conducted transactions over the internet exclusively. This was at a time when only around 5% of the world population had access to the internet and only one-fourth of all U.S. banks had websites, with very few offering any kind of online banking services. To even consider that technology could do banking better than well-established financial organisations was a downright outrageous idea at the time to many. Interestingly, First IB was able to offer higher interest rates on deposits and charged no fees for most of its services since it did not have to maintain any branches and had lower overhead than most traditional banks. Moreover, such a bank has fewer access points than a brick-and-mortar structure, leading to stronger security.

First IB made banking available and convenient outside of the regular hours and introduced a completely new style of banking. Above all else, this venture signifies how efficiently technology can rival traditional, non-technical solutions - even when masses are sceptical about its success initially. Additionally, the idea of First IB reinforces how technology is truly meant to be employed - to bring convenience to the lives of people.

The introduction of the IBM Portable Personal Computer 5155 - a product whose roaring success surprised many, including IBM itself - on the 16th of February, 1984 popularised personal computers for everyday use. Weighing about 30 pounds, this computer had the following specifications: built-in ROM Basic, 256K memory standard, 9-inch 25x80 monochrome amber screen which could display graphics, DOS, and Intel 8088 4.77MHz CPU. The keyboard could be detached or folded and snapped shut in the case covering the computer. Priced at $2900, it was an immediate hit with the public and became the first personal computer to gain widespread adoption by the industry.

Initially, IBM could not find enough applications for this PC to justify acceptance on a broad basis. Moreover, even if this idea could be approved, it would not have been completed in a short timeframe. However, Bill Lowe, a lab director at IBM, stepped forward and claimed that he could develop a portable personal computer within a year. It was then that a team consisting of 12 developers was established which set out to create this device in 12 months. They were tasked with devising a plan for the software, hardware, marketing setup, and sales strategy. As the plan progressed, more talent and expertise was brought into this project.

Although personal computers were available as early as the 1970s, they provided very few applications that did not justify widespread and mainstream use. However, IBM offered a full suite of important applications that could justify broad adoption by the market. It became so popular that for a year or two, the Columbia Business School required every student to have this computer. In addition to this, it was IBM’s brand recognition as well as the massive marketing campaign that led to the fast growth of the personal computers industry. Furthermore, this computer was widely cloned and gave birth to a vast ecosystem of hardware, software, and peripherals to use with it.

The revolutionary launch of Google Maps on the 8th of February, 2005, transformed the way we use maps for directions and navigate the world with our smartphones. Initially, it was launched for desktop as a solution for people to get from one point to another. Today, it’s a gateway to exploration - whether you are travelling by car, bike, public transport, boat, wheelchair, or on foot.

Google Maps makes use of a combination of data sources such as aggregate location data, real-time users feedback, historical traffic patterns and local government data along with machine learning. There are multiple views that a user can switch between depending upon their need(s). With over 1 billion monthly active users, it ranks high among the leading mapping applications worldwide. It offers driving directions for 194 countries, spanning over 28 million miles of road. It can provide local information for more than 80 million places across the world and live traffic data from over 50 countries. All of this data is kept up-to-date and reliable with tens of thousands of updates daily.

Although Google was not the first to introduce online maps (the world wide web supported the first online maps in 1993), it brought digital maps to the mainstream and popularised their usage. Interestingly, a wide array of other applications and services today rely on Google Maps - Uber, Airbnb, WhatsApp, and UrbanSpoon all are based on Google Maps application user interface (API). This service was invented with the vision to “create one seamless, browsable map of the entire world” - a daunting task that Google Maps has accomplished exceptionally well. The marriage of complicated technologies and diverse data sources in Google Maps has humanised and contextualised location to make it more relevant to us, as should be the purpose of technology and innovation.

Facebook was founded on the 4th of February, 2004, as “The facebook” by Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Chris Hughes, and Dustin Moskovitz, following the high popularity of Facemash. In 2003, these four Harvard students created Facemash, an online service to judge and rate how attractive their fellow students were. The pictures received 22,000 votes from 450 students. However, since this was in violation of the university rules, Facemash was shut down after just two days. Zuckerberg, however, noticed how well-received and popular Facemash was and registered the domain name: thefacebook.com. In February 2012, Facebook filed to become a public company, raising $16 billion in May - the largest Initial Public Offering (IPO) for any internet company till then.

What started as a Harvard social networking website is now the biggest global internet phenomenon today. With nearly 3 billion monthly active users, it is the leading social media platform. However, today, Facebook has transitioned beyond just a place for people to share their lives with their friends. It is an entire ecosystem offering opportunities to thrive in multiple facets of life - business, entertainment, politics, journalism, communication, etc. In fact, this tech giant has grown to the point where it owns a few of the most popular social media networks available to us - WhatsApp and Instagram, for instance.

Over the years, among the challenges that Facebook had to constantly battle, privacy and misinformation remain significant problems. Users have been sceptical of the confidentiality of their data and concerned over the veracity of the information they consume. That being said, it is undeniable that Facebook has forever altered computing and technology. It has been a driving force in open source for many years and shared its innovative hardware and software tools with the broader community. It has, furthermore, given birth to Big Data (in the form of Cassandra database), created millions of jobs, became a major platform for political parties to contest elections, helped organise revolutions, and decided what news is. To put it simply, we have not seen a bigger and more powerful internet phenomenon in our times than Facebook.

The introduction of Macintosh by Apple on the 22nd of January, 1984, revolutionised the computing industry by making computers easy to use for any and everyone, not just experts. The Macintosh, or Mac as it is now known, is a series of several lines of personal computers, developed by Apple. The original Macintosh was the first commercially successful personal computer that included two known yet unpopular features at the time - mouse and graphical user interface (GUI) instead of the command-line interfaces that were in common use. It was also the pioneer in print preview, the ability to see how a document would look once printed before printing it. However, while this computer was a visionary product, it did not offer very much to the users. In fact, when Macintosh was first launched, it was not a hit, was unaffordable, and was not completely workable. Today, there are more than 100 million Macs in use.

Macintosh or Mac has changed computing significantly, introducing innovative concepts and inspiring breakthroughs in technology. It introduced the idea of icons and turned them into art. It made networking easy since Macs could be connected to each other using AppleTalk. Furthermore, Microsoft Office was born on Mac and following its success, Microsoft released a Windows version. It made pointing portable before touchpads and enabled playing digital videos with QuickStart. Moreover, it brought forward the idea of a backlit keyboard and light sensors.

While the creation of Macintosh is undeniably a remarkable technological achievement, what’s even more inspiring is its relevance and significance even today, almost 4 decades later. Not only has it existed for this long but it also mattered all these years. A major reason for this enduring relevance is Apple and Mac’s commitment to staying fresh by getting rid of redundant and unnecessary features - truly incorporating the spirit of evolution.

On the 15th of January, 2001, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger launched Wikipedia, a free and collaborative online encyclopedia. Written and edited by the internet community, it is the largest of its type of websites and is available in over 300 languages besides English. With more than 6.3 million articles and 42 million users, it is ranked among the most visited sites on the internet today.

In 2000, Bomis, a web advertising firm owned by Jimmy Wales, among others, launched Nupedia. This was a free online encyclopedia whose editor in chief was Larry Sanger. By January 2001, fewer than two dozen articles were completed and there were rarely any contributions. Concerned about the growth of Nupedia, Sanger and Wales decided to lend it support with an open-source encyclopedia based on wiki software. Initially, Wikipedia was launched as a feature of Nupedia but following certain objections from the advisory board and reluctance among the editors and reviewers to associate Nupedia with a wiki-based site, Wikipedia was relaunched as an independent website a few days later. It grew at a staggering pace and by the end of the year, Wikipedia was available in around 19 languages.

Throughout the years, the most serious challenges that Wikipedia has faced are plagiarism, inaccuracies, and vandalism. Despite this, impressively, Wikipedia has maintained its role as the go-to site for millions of users to access information online. It continues to be a reliable database of information without a large number of paid moderators and editors. Additionally, the site owners and policymakers have implemented various strategies to counter its problems and ensure that their original vision is truly fulfilled - allowing people to collaborate and build an online portal of easily accessible knowledge. Thus, what keeps Wikipedia relevant and reliable today despite its collaborative nature is the review of all information by broad groups of people, stringent requirements regarding the data, its transparent discussions, and the willingness to swiftly delete inaccurate content.

There are very few technological events in recent history that can rival the introduction of the iPhone by Apple on the 9th of January, 2007. Dubbing it the “reinvention of the phone”, the company claimed that it was a revolutionary product that was five years ahead of any other mobile phone. Starting at $499, this first-generation iPhone offered a 3.5-inch diagonal screen, had a 2-megapixel camera, and featured the then-new multitouch features. This device was marketed as a combination of three products - a mobile phone, a widescreen iPod, and a breakthrough internet communications device. The first iPhone sold 1.39 million units. Today, this device holds a major share in the global smartphone market revenue.

With every new line of iPhone introduced, this smartphone has gained loyal fans and become a highly popular brand. A few of the aspects that make the iPhone so uniquely desirable are as follows. This device was not the first to feature a multi-touch screen but it was the first to make using one highly intuitive and easy. Using an iPhone is a luxury experience since it is made from high-quality products. The design is extremely simple and minimalistic yet elegant, adding to the ease of use. The seamless integration with the Apple ecosystem offers greater security and better software optimisation. And of course, the extremely positive perception and image attached to this phone are almost unparalleled.

At the time of its release, critics did not foresee the iPhone performing well in the market due to its price range. Interestingly, since 2009, this product has been ranked among the top 5 smartphone vendors in the world. In the year 2020 alone, iPhone revenue was over $137.7 billion. In fact, this product is so revolutionary that it has separated the smartphone market into two categories - the iPhone and everything else.

When Bitcoin was created by its mysterious pseudonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto on the 3rd of January, 2009, the world was introduced to a completely new form of currency - cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is a form of binary data which acts as a payment medium. Since then, thousands of cryptocurrencies have been launched taking the current total to over 7,812. However, Bitcoin remains the most popular and traded cryptocurrency in the industry. In fact, the price movement of Bitcoin strongly impacts the entire cryptocurrency market.

Bitcoin was initially created to be an electronic, peer-to-peer cash system but now it is also viewed as a store-of-value currency, such as gold. The concept of this cryptocurrency was introduced in a white paper in 2008 under a pseudonym. To this day, the identity of the author is unknown; in fact, it is not even known whether this paper was by a single person or a group of people. What makes Bitcoin so valuable is its scarcity. With the maximum supply set at 21 million, there will not be any more Bitcoins - no one can create or duplicate them, not even the original inventor(s). As with all cryptocurrencies, the parameters (for example, the rules of buying and selling, the total amount, how new Bitcoins can be added to the market, etc.) for Bitcoin have been set.

Today, Bitcoin is not only significant because it is merely at the top of all cryptocurrencies. It is crucial because it established an altogether new financial ecosystem. Cryptocurrencies offer multiple benefits, some of which are as follows. They provide anonymity which is paramount for many when it comes to financing. With the world economy shifting to digital currency in the future, the worth of cryptocurrencies will only increase. With cryptocurrencies, settlements are instant, transactions extremely simple, and availability is high due to easy internet access for many.

The launch of Bitcoin created a digital currency ecosystem that has just truly begun and will inevitably transform the world economy in the future.

The creation of the Domain Name System (DNS) on the 1st of January, 1985 transformed the way the internet was browsed. Essentially the phonebook of the internet, the DNS allowed users to access information using domain names instead of IP addresses.

Each machine or device connected to the internet has a unique Internet Protocol (IP) address that is used to find and interact with a particular device. These IP addresses can be in the IPv4 format (such as 192.168.1.1) or the newer, alphanumeric IPv6 format (like 2400:cb00:2048:1::c629:d7a2). Web browsers interact and load internet resources using IP addresses. While this is completely understandable for machines, it is exceptionally difficult for humans to memorise more than a few IP addresses. To make accessing websites easier, the DNS was created which translates domain names (such as google.com) to IP addresses. While the way the DNS works involves several servers and can be a long-winded process, it takes a few milliseconds only to fetch an IP address given a domain name.

If it weren’t for the DNS, we would still be using difficult-to-remember strings of numbers like 192.58.9.34 instead of the easy and memorable domain names that we use today. DNS enabled users to have a more user-friendly, collaborative, and diverse internet. With over 363.5 million registered domain names, the DNS is not only a fundamental part of the internet today but also its backbone. In fact, if a DNS is not responding, a connection to other websites over the internet cannot be established. Interestingly, before personal computing became popular, the few users over the internet could memorise and recognise some familiar IP addresses but this is beyond practical in today’s time and age with millions of domain names and even more IP addresses, which further underscores how significant the DNS is.